What The Avatar Movies Really Look Like Without Special Effects

When Jake (Sam Worthington) is exploring the jungles of Pandora, he runs into a creature known as a thanator. The ferocious beast has six legs and a huge mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth. It's carnivorous, strong, and aggressive, yet also quite agile and fast — somewhat similar to a panther in real life.

Jake fights the thanator, but before CGI was added, the crew used a long pole with a red ball on it to stand in for the creature. The crew member holding the pole would lunge at Worthington so he could react on cue. Seeing Worthington look so terrified about a stick with a red ball on it gives us a whole new level of respect for the actors in the "Avatar" movies.

Jake is almost killed by the thanator, but manages to escape by jumping down a big waterfall. Later, Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) teaches Jake more about Pandora and the creatures that live there, and he realizes that the thanator was just trying to protect its home.

As the head of the Avatar Program, Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) spends years studying Pandora. She's a xenobotanist, so she specializes in studying alien plant life, and many of the scientists on the ship admire her for writing a detailed book about the various plants on Pandora. She isn't just interested in plants, though; she's also fascinated by the culture of the Na'vi. She's empathetic towards their views and dedicates much of her time to building a peaceful relationship with the Omatikaya clan, even establishing a school where the Na'vi and humans can interact.

Since she's so involved with the Avatar Program, it only makes sense that she has an avatar of her own. While in her avatar, she wears more clothing than the Na'vi typically do, with a crimson Stanford tank top, khaki shorts, and occasionally a tan shirt. While filming the scenes of Grace in her avatar, Weaver wore a motion tracking suit, gloves, helmet, and helmet cam. She also had dots on her face to help animators translate her expressions into CGI later on. It's fascinating to see how closely the animators translated Weaver's expressions and body movements from the original footage to the final production.

A lot of special effects were used to make the "Avatar" films, but that doesn't mean there weren't any practical effects. The scene of Jake and Neytiri climbing floating rocks required a unique combination of special and practical effects. While wearing cables for safety, Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña had to climb a tall structure that was specially designed for the film. The process somewhat resembled climbing a wall at a rock climbing gym, since there were plenty of handholds for them to grab onto while making their way up the structure.

In the movie, the floating rocks were part of the Hallelujah Mountains. The majestic landscape was inspired by Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, located in the Hunan Province in China. There's one tall pillar in particular, the Southern Sky Column, that helped Cameron and his team design the Hallelujah Mountains. Could these floating mountains exist on some distant planet in real life?

"So, you know, you see floating mountains in the film. They're never explained," Cameron said during a 2010 interview with NPR. "Now, I happened to have, you know, sort of reverse-engineered a scientific explanation of how those mountains float, but every time I tried to shoehorn it into the movie, I just found that it was unnecessary explanation. People would accept that they had been transported to this amazing place where the rules were different, and it was okay for mountains to float. And it turned out that that technical explanation was completely unnecessary."

Neytiri is a fearsome, agile warrior who is very skilled at using bows. She's also the tsakarem of the Omatikaya clan, which means she's in training to become the spiritual leader of the community. On top of all that, she's about nine feet tall and has sharp fangs, so when she gets upset and yells, it's intense to say the least.

When Jake tells the Na'vi that the humans are planning to attack the sacred Hometree, Neytiri becomes extremely distraught. "You will never be one of the people!" she yells, pushing Jake.

While filming the dramatic scene, Zoe Saldaña wore her motion tracking suit, helmet, and helmet cam. She had a bunch of dots on her face to help animators track her expressions and translate them into CGI. It's pretty remarkable that Saldaña was able to give such an emotional performance while looking like that, but it goes to show how talented of an actress she is.

"I, at least, have no idea that I'm wearing this," Saldaña said, referring to her motion capture outfit. "I feel like I'm blue and I'm nine feet tall."

The Na'vi have a very special relationship with nature, living harmoniously with the natural world rather than exploiting it. Since the Omatikaya clan lives in the forest, they hold trees in particularly high regard, and some trees are important spiritual destinations.

The Tree of Souls is an absolutely stunning location that Jake and Neytiri visit after their banshee flight. It's an enormous tree with long glowing leaves that hang from its branches. The Na'vi revere the Tree of Souls because it allows them to connect closely with their deity Eywa, making it the most sacred place in all of Pandora. Later on, Jake and Neytiri visit the Tree of Voices, a sacred site that looks similar to the Tree of Souls. They connect their tendrils to the tree to hear the voices of ancestors and pray.

Although the sacred trees looked gorgeous in the film, the sets where the scenes were filmed were much less enchanting. Saldaña and Worthington really had to use their imaginations, admiring pieces of black string that would later be transformed into glowing leaves with CGI. To simulate connecting to the Tree of Voices with their tendrils, the actors each put a piece of frayed rope up to the strings.

The Na'vi aren't the only characters that need CGI. Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) is the chief of security during humankind's war against the Na'vi. He's the hotheaded main antagonist in the first film, but despite his military prowess, he wouldn't stand a chance against the nine-foot-tall Na'vi warriors if he tries going up against them with a mere gun. Instead, he uses a large mech suit that's very impressive with both offense and defense. It's sturdy, has powerful robotic limbs, and can fire weapons with ease.

Even though Colonel Quaritch himself didn't need any CGI in the first movie since he was a human, his mech suit was a different story; it required both practical and special effects. During filming, Lang sat in a big mech suit that looked very similar to the one in the movie, minus a few details. CG robotic arms, digital screens, and a large gun were added later to complete the look.

The Metkayina clan plays a huge role in "Avatar: The Way of Water." When humans return to Pandora, the vengeful Colonel Quaritch goes on a mission to kill Jake, causing Jake and his family to flee the forest to protect the Omatikaya clan. They travel a great distance until they arrive at the aquatic environment where the Metkayina tribe lives, seeking refuge with them.

Since the Metkayina clan lives on the shores near the ocean and islands near the mainland, they have a special relationship with water. They spend much of their time swimming around the coral reefs, hunting for fish, and interacting with the local wildlife. Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and his mate Ronal (Kate Winslet) are the leaders of the clan.

While filming the scenes of this new clan, the actors all wore motion capture suits that looked slightly different. Each of the suits had its own unique colors and patterns, most likely to help animators differentiate the characters from one another later on. Although many of the scenes were filmed with real water, the scene of the clan standing in shallow water at night was filmed without any water, so that was entirely CGI.

Neytiri killed Colonel Quaritch in "Avatar," but at the beginning of "Avatar: The Way of Water," we learn that Quaritch's consciousness has been duplicated and put into an avatar. Since he has all the memories of the original Quaritch, along with a bigger, stronger body, he's essentially a new and improved version of himself.

Quaritch's Avatar looks similar to the Na'vi, with blue skin, large yellow eyes, and pointed ears. Unlike most of the Na'vi though, he wears a lot of clothing. He's often seen wearing a tactical vest and pants, although sometimes he wears a tank top instead of the vest. He has short black hair, a watch, and the same eagle tattoo on his left arm as he did when he was human.

Because of all this, Lang had to wear a motion capture suit while filming the sequel, which he didn't have to do for the first movie. He had black dots on his face to assist with tracking his facial movements. Lang said that having an avatar body rather than a human body had a profound effect on the character.

"To take a character who represents the most kind of antiquated and limited point of view of a planet, which is Quaritch in the original 'Avatar,' and by placing him within the context of a Na'vi body, it advances Quaritch's own point of view," Lang shared. "He's brain locked on mission, always has been, but that's not the case anymore."

Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) is the teenage daughter of the late Dr. Augustine. Her father hasn't been revealed, but she's the adopted daughter of Jake and Neytiri. She's a bit of an oddball, so she doesn't always fit in with the other Na'vi teens, but on the bright side, she has a strong connection to Eywa and the natural world. Kiri visits the Cove of the Ancestors and connects to the sacred Spirit Tree, causing her to see her mother, but also suffer from a seizure. Later on, it's revealed that she has the mystical ability to control Pandoran plants and wildlife. 

Thanks to technological innovation, Sigourney Weaver, who played Dr. Augustine in the original film, was able to portray Kiri in the sequel. She wore a motion capture suit and moved in a bouncy, playful way to portray the teenage character. "The amazing thing is that the technology gives me that portal to bring my 14-year-old self to play this girl," Weaver said. "I remember [James Cameron] saying to me, 'You're really only 14 the way you act most of the time, so you can do this.'"